County Championship: Sean Dickson ton puts Kent on top against Warwickshire

Sean Dickson's hundred was his third of the season in all formats

Sean Dickson hit his best score of the season as Kent amassed 338-2 against an improvised Warwickshire attack.

Injury problems meant the Bears fielded a trio of on-loan seamers at Canterbury and Kent's batsmen took full advantage.

Dickson, who batted throughout the day to finish unbeaten on 146, shared an opening partnership of 132 with Zak Crawley (72).

Daniel Bell-Drummond helped Dickson to build on that strong foundation as he contributed an undefeated 68.

Having won the toss, home skipper Heino Kuhn opted to bat and his decision paid dividends as the Warwickshire bowlers were put to the sword.

There was little joy for any of the visitors' new faces, two of whom, Leicestershire loan man Ben Mike and James Wainman, were making their Bears debuts.

After Warwickshire went wicketless in the opening session, medium-pacer Will Rhodes eventually made the breakthrough soon after lunch, trapping Crawley lbw.

Joe Denly (22) then helped Dickson to add 54 for the second wicket before he fell to part-time bowler Matt Lamb, who claimed only the fifth scalp of his first-class career.

But Dickson advanced to his second Championship ton of the campaign from 212 balls and his partnership with Bell-Drummond had reached 152 by the close.

Kent centurion Sean Dickson:

"Batting at Canterbury has been a bit of a struggle for me over the past two years, but all credit to Adrian Llong, the groundsman, who's really produced a nice batting track this week.

"I just looked to play straight. My game plan was to stay tighter, keep it in the 'v' and it's worked. The team target is 500-plus.

"As for me, I'm 50-odd away from a double hundred. Those opportunities don't come around too often, so I'll get my head down and try to battle through.

"The ideal scenario from here would be to bat big and bowl them out twice. They're heavy on injuries right now and they'll have tired legs once we've finished batting, so if our bowlers can hit the same spots over and over, then I'm sure we'll pose some serious questions."

Warwickshire head coach Jim Troughton told BBC WM:

"It was a good toss to win. It would have been nice had we had first use of it. We are under extreme circumstances with all our frontline seamers injured and another playing for England in Chris Woakes.

"To have all our options taken away by injury is a little hard to swallow, so it was a tall order for us opening up with a couple of bowlers on loan who were maybe a little bit nervous.

"We stuck to our guns and tried to make them score their runs as slowly as possible and keep them in check. I don't think they ever really got away from us. We stuck to our tasks manfully.

"It's been a tough few weeks all round. In fact, even our team coach had injury issues and broke down on the way here, so we had to get a loan coach in to pick us up from Maidstone Services."